Kaspersky Reveals New Patterns of Online Gambling Promotion on Social Media

Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has revealed that the pattern of distributing and promoting online gambling content has undergone a significant change, shifting from reliance on websites and digital advertisements to the use of fake social media accounts and automated systems. Kaspersky Indonesia Country Manager Defi Nofitra stated that online gambling promotions are now increasingly appearing through spam comments on viral posts, social media accounts with high interaction rates, private messages, temporary links, and URL shortening services. “We are seeing a clear shift from static websites and banner ads towards highly adaptive and automated distribution methods,” Defi said in a written statement on Thursday (16/7/2026). According to him, a few years ago, online gambling promotions were relatively easy to recognise because they generally used dedicated sites or digital ads. However, promotional content is now often disguised as ordinary user interaction, making suppression and content moderation efforts more challenging. Defi assessed that the use of bots working automatically is one of the main factors driving the massive spread of online gambling promotions. Bots can be used to publish thousands of comments in a short time, create new accounts after old ones are blocked, and alter keywords and language styles to avoid automatic detection systems.